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Search and Discovery

Glassy searches across every type you've saved — notes, bookmarks, captures, documents, voice transcripts, and Obsidian vault files. There are two search surfaces: the lightweight universal search overlay and the deep Knowledge Base workspace.

Universal search (Cmd/Ctrl + K)

Press Cmd+K (macOS) or Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) from anywhere in the app. The overlay opens, focused on the input.

What it searches

  • Note titles, bodies, and frontmatter
  • Bookmark URLs, titles, descriptions, and tags
  • Capture titles, source URLs, and bodies
  • Document text content (PDFs are OCR'd on upload)
  • Voice memo transcripts
  • Tag names and collection names

Operators

Operator Example What it does
tag:<name> tag:research Filter to items tagged research
type:<type> type:note Filter to a content type (note, bookmark, capture, voice, document)
from:<account> from:work Limit to a specific account
after:<date> after:2026-06-01 Items created on or after the date
before:<date> before:2026-07-01 Items created on or before the date
"exact phrase" "second brain" Match the exact phrase, not its synonyms
-<word> meeting -standup Exclude items containing the word

Operators combine: tag:research after:2026-06-01 "second brain" is a valid query.

Keyboard navigation

Action Mac Windows/Linux
Open overlay Cmd + K Ctrl + K
Next result ↓ ↓
Previous result ↑ ↑
Open result Enter Enter
Filter by type Tab then arrow keys Tab then arrow keys
Close Esc Esc

Knowledge Base workspace (#/kb)

The Knowledge Base is the deep search surface — it uses hybrid search (BM25 full-text + vector semantic) with Reciprocal Rank Fusion. It's the same engine the MCP server exposes to your AI tools.

  • You remember the meaning but not the exact words → use KB. Semantic search finds related concepts even when your query shares no vocabulary with the result.
  • You want to search across sub-accounts in one query → use KB. The universal overlay scopes to the active account by default.
  • You want relevance scores and source-type filters → use KB. The overlay just shows the top 10 results.
  • You want to query your Obsidian vault from inside Glassy → use KB. The universal overlay doesn't search vault files.

KB filters

Filter Effect
Source type bookmark · note · document · vault_file · voice_transcript
Account limit to one account (default: active)
Date range last 7 days · 30 days · 90 days · custom
Sort relevance · created · updated

Smart filters

Save any KB query as a Smart filter. The filter re-runs automatically when new content lands, so it surfaces as a sidebar entry under Organize → Smart filters. Useful for: "things tagged reading-list I haven't opened in 30 days", "captures from youtube.com this week", "vault files mentioning attention".

Every note has a Related Notes panel showing the 8 most semantically similar notes in your workspace. It updates as you edit — Related Notes use the same vector embeddings as the Knowledge Base, recomputed on save.

Search across sub-accounts

Universal search by default scopes to the active account. To search everywhere you have access, open the KB workspace and pick All accounts in the account filter.

Performance notes

  • The first KB query after a long idle period may take a beat while the embedding cache warms.
  • Vault file search requires the Obsidian Local REST API plugin to be reachable. On the cloud, vault search is unavailable — vault files are imported as notes during ZIP import instead.
  • Voice transcript search is full-text; it does not understand audio timestamps. Use the voice memo's inline player to scrub.

Learn more